Major Indian cities see sharp drop in COVID-19 infections

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NEW DELHI – India’s capital Delhi and financial hub Mumbai have reported a sharp drop in COVID-19 infections over the past two days and most of those who have contracted the virus have recovered at home, officials said on Monday. authorities.

Mumbai’s daily new infections fell below 10,000 on Sunday for the first time since the start of this month, after hitting a record high of 20,971 on January 7. It reported 7,895 infections as of Sunday evening, the Mumbai Municipality said.

Delhi’s cases have fallen steadily since peaking at 28,867 on January 13 and are expected to drop below 15,000 on Monday for the first time since early January, the government’s health minister told reporters. the city.

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Both cities said more than 80% of their COVID-19 hospital beds have remained unoccupied since the rapidly transmitting Omicron variant led to a massive increase in cases since the start of the year.

“With a very large number of subclinical, asymptomatic and undetected cases, it is difficult to identify a spike in new cases,” said Rajib Dasgupta, director of the Center for Social Medicine and Community Health at Jawaharlal University. Nehru from New Delhi. E-mail.

“In this situation, the follow-up of the hospitalization is more cautious; today’s case may be next week’s hospitalization.

Other epidemiologists say a national peak in cases could come in early or mid-February.

Experts attributed the low hospitalizations to high levels of infections and previous vaccinations 01-07. India has fully vaccinated around 70% of its 939 million adults and hopes to give the first two doses to around 70 million more teenagers by next month.

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Government advised states to primarily only ask people with symptoms of COVID-19 to get tested https://www.Reuters.com/world/india/indias-new-covid-19-rules-aim -free-up-resources -carry-risks-2022-01-13 instead of random checks as before which strained resources especially during the last big wave in April and May when millions of people were infected and tens of thousands died.

India’s COVID-19 infections rose by 258,089 in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said on Monday, bringing the total to 37.38 million – the most in the world after the United States.

Deaths rose by 385 – nearly 40% of them due to a delayed registration of previous deaths in the southern state of Kerala – for a toll of 486,451. Only the United States and Brazil reported more total deaths related to COVID-19. (Reporting by Krishna N. Das, Chandini Monnappa and Neha Arora; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Clarence Fernandez)